RPGs In The 'Real World'

As more and more people realize the fun they're denying themselves by turning away from orc-bashing and dragon-baiting, mainstream businesses and media are paying more attention to RPGs. Sam the Giant writes "Barnes & Noble University is offering a free 8 hour on-line course titled 'Discover Dungeons & Dragons: Becoming a D&D Player'. The free course is described as follows: 'As a beginning player, this course will guide you in understanding how D&D works, explaining the various worlds and characters types that it is based on, creating a D&D role for yourself, and understanding how your player role interacts in the world and with other characters. You will learn the extent of your abilities and the possibilities that lie ahead for your player, including magical spells, mythic quests, and epic battles with incredible monsters.' It's free to enroll." In the same vein, NPR's great reporting turns to World of Warcraft. Dragoonmac writes "All Things Considered recently ran a feature about WoW communities, farmers, and a humorous review of real-life. A Slashdotter's must hear."

Comments

Re:RPG...

[mick88]

I realize that you are leading me way off topic, but I thought I would at least bother to ask: have you listend to NPR in the past 6 months? Most of the reporting has to do with Iraq, the supreme court, scandals (plenty about the CPB scandal, too) and the way too much freakin' hurricane coverage. I'm a huge NPR fan, but dammit enough hurricane coverage!!

Believe it or not, NPR will provide you a hell of a lot more info about what's going on in the world and the country than most news stations cause they skip the majority of the tabloid, sensationalist trashy stuff that local stations thrive on. Yeah, you can bitch and moan that it further left than Fox news, but honestly: it's 99% solid reporting about actual news.

This stupid RPG story was meant to be a lighter story to give a break from the serious stuff, that's all. And if you listen to a lot of NPR, you are usually grateful for the stories that change the pace.

If your tax dollars are being wasted, beleive me... it's not NPR that wasting the bulk of them. The entire lump sum of tax dollars going to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for this year (http://www.house.gov/budget/laborhhs03.htm) is 360 million, compared to a total projected overal spending of 300-600 BILLION in iraq (multiple years, obviously), as well as projected 200 BILLION spent on Katrina (http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm844.cfm ). BTW - that's from the heritage foundation, generally known to be quite conservative people.

Not saying we shouldn't be in Iraq just saying that NPR doesn't cost you much comparatively.

Re:don't get ahead of yourselves

[Z34107]

Liberate the proletariat! Peace, Land, Bread! All power to the Soviets! Long live Red October and the Bolshevik revolution!

And, by the way, of the two extremes, Clinton was more totalitarian in expanding the powers of government than he was anarchist.

Remember, since you already modded the parent down, modding me down too would be redundant. :D

Re:You're utterly off-topic

[Valdrax]

Hell, you'd probably find people calling George Will liberal because he doesn't like the president, and he's quite possibly the most conservative man on the planet.

Oh, sure. There are two reasons for this. The first is that there are legitimate issues on which some conservatives define themselves as conservatives whether most other people would consider them conservative at all. Some examples are, fiscal discipline against running up debts, border controls against immigration, protectionist trade policies, support for a national prescription drug benefit, other forms of corporate welfare, racial diverisity in his cabinet, etc. It all depends on what each person think a "true conservative" philosophy is. One not uncommon split would be over his links to the neocons. Neoconservativism was a perjorative invented in the time of the doves & hawks split in the Democratic Party during Vietnam to insult liberal hawks would had previously dominated party policy. Neocons didn't actually become conservative until the Reagan years. Some traditional conservatives still think of the neocons as "liberals."

The second reason is that a lot of conservatives define a liberal as anyone who disagrees with them. If they come to disagree with the President, it's cause he's too "liberal" for them. I remember a primary election in my state where two Republicans ran largely on platforms that the each other was a liberal even though both were arch-conservatives.